What Does This Wire Do?

Posted on Mon Oct 14th, 2019 @ 1:27pm by Staff Sergeant Creighton Arcadia & Brigadier General Nathan Wolf & Civillian Ravi Azad PhD & Civillian Selyna Braeden

Mission: Mother Knows Best
Location: Lab in Cheyenne Mountain
Timeline: Current

The electronics and computer engineers had set up the 'Jamming Sphere' in one of the Engineering Labs for Doctors Azad and Braeden to start working on. One of them was explaining what they'd found out so far.

"Not much," he said. "And that's probably because we haven't done much to it yet. We X-Rayed it and this is what we got." He showed them the X-Rays putting the digital images on a large monitor. "There's definitely some kind of circuitry in there, and what seems like it could be a power source, but that seems to be dormant or in some kind of hibernation or sleep mode. We've been looking forward to getting inside the thing and take a look around, but we wanted to wait for you."

Selyna studied the image for several long moments. "This is good, but we can't really tell much from this alone." She frowned. "It's likely in some kind of power-saving mode when not active. Hm... have you guys done anything besides X-ray it?" she asked. Best to know everything that had been done first so they wouldn't duplicate the previous work.

"We didn't want to do too much to it," the tech said. "And we've steadfastly resisted the urge to just start pushing buttons or otherwise using the controls, mostly because we can't even begin to understand what any of them do. We do think we can cut into the outer casing without damaging any of the internals, if you want us to do it that way. They're must be a manual way to open it, but we haven't found it yet."

Selyna shook her head. "No, I'd rather not try cutting it unless we have no other option. Besides, we don't know what that might do. The thing might have some kind of failsafe if it is opened improperly." She frowned deeply. "And you're right; we don't want to just start pushing buttons." She paused, thinking, trying to remember who found it. "Asher! That was it!" she finally said, as if she'd had a Eureka moment. Then her expression became annoyed and frustrated. "Shit! He's gone off world." Sighing, she began to examine the thing visually. "Have your people taken pictures of the whole surface of the thing?" she asked, not looking at the tech.

"Yes, Doctor," the tech said. He called up the images on another monitor. "From every angle... well, it's a sphere, so I don't if that phrase applies..." The tech noticed the two doctors looking at him strangely. "Er--Right, sorry. There are the pictures."

"What we need is a lead lined room," said Ravi. " And a robot to push the buttons." He studied the pictures for a moment. "I would be willing to bet that aside from the buttons, it is a perfect sphere."

Selyna grinned at him. "Well, if you want to get out a micrometer, you can certainly check." she teased, knowing full well that was a mechanic's tool, not an engineer's. She became serious in the next moment. "But the lead-lined room and robot arm isn't a bad idea. Question is... where do we get them?"
"Uh," the tech said. "We have something like that. It's on one of the other levels. I can have the sphere brought there if you'd like."

"I should have known we would have one," Ravi replied. "Yes, that would be wonderful. Then we can push buttons to our heart's content."

Selyna looked askance at her fellow scientist, though the look was half teasing as well. "So reckless of you, Doctor Azad." she teased. "It would hardly do to just go randomly pushing buttons." She knew this was serious, and she was serious about it, but that didn't mean that they had to be stick jockeys about it either, did it? Also, she knew what he'd meant; she just had to tease him good-naturedly. She was happy, and it was reflecting itself in her behavior... just a bit.

"Uh, right," the tech said. He picked up the sphere and handed it to Ravi. "Just follow the read signage with the skulls and crossbones on them. When you fine the door with the sign over it that says Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here, you've arrived."

Ravi grinned and took the sphere. “Shall we?” He said to Selyna.

Selyna smiled and motioned for him to precede her from the room. "After you, Ravi. You're the one carrying the Sphere of Doom." she teased.

“You will be happy to know,” started Ravi as they followed the signs to the Radiation Shielded room, “that I do not intend to just randomly push buttons. I intend to randomly push one button. Well, not random, really. This button here, “ he said pointing to one with an X over it, “is the button of interest. I am guessing it is the one that cuts off the signal. If we press it and nothing happens- as I suspect- then we will know that certain symbols may be universal. It will make discerning other buttons’ functions a bit simpler. Oh now really!” he exclaimed as they approached the door. “I thought he was joking about the sign!”

Selyna laughed softly at his reaction to the sign. She had also thought the tech was joking, but her reaction had been less... exaggerated. "You're cute when you're flustered." she teased as she moved past him to open the door. "And as to the buttons, that symbol might not be an X in their alphabet. Hell, it might mean nothing. Or it might mean Death like the crossbones symbol in Earth mythos." she continued. Her eyes glittered with playfulness as she asked, "You sure you want to start with that one?" She took this seriously; he was just so much fun to play with. And given that they were dealing with such heavy stuff, she thought a little bit of levity might make it feel less... oppressive.

"Absolutely," answered Ravi. "All of the cultures were taken from Earth, right? And just about every language uses an X to mean end or no or something similar. It's a nearly universal constant. Or at least a world-wide one. My guess is that whoever built this used the same symbols we might use. Because you'd want someone else to be able to figure it out. I wish I'd been paying better attention when Andrews accidentally shut it down. Oh, well. We'll figure it out eventually." He entered the room and went through a metal door to place the device inside the radiation shielded room, then returned to the control room and closed the metal door, giving the wheel on it a turn and hearing the locks thunk satisfyingly into place. "All right!" he said, looking and sounding altogether too excited. "Ready?"

Selyna thought that he was way too happy about this. Oh, she enjoyed the process of figuring out new tech too, but Ravi seemed to be getting off on it. She chuckled. "I wouldn't dream of robbing you of your fun. Push away. Oh, and it was Asher who shut it off, I think." she corrected with a smile. Not that it mattered all that much who it had been since none of them seemed to know how it had been done. That was why they were here. And if she was truly honest with herself, she did want to see what this thing did.

"Asher, right," agreed Ravi, but his memory was fuzzy. "Okay, here goes." He spent a couple of minutes examining the controls and fussing with them a bit and then confidently reached the arm towards the device and very carefully depressed the button with an X on it.

Selyna winced, expecting the thing to explode or something. Nothing seemed to happen. "Hm..." she said softly, more to herself. "Maybe try the one with the bisected circle on it?" she suggested.

Ravi grinned like a kid in a candy shop. "Well, if X indeed means stop, or off, as we now know it does, then we can extrapolate the rest of them. All right... so a bisected circle would be... half power? What do you think?"

Selyna frowned. They hadn't really proved that the X button turned it off since it had been off to start with. Really, all they'd proved was that it didn't turn it on or blow them up. Still, she let it go for the moment and studied the markings again. "It might. We really can't prove anything until we figure out how to turn it on. So if that one does mean half power, it would be safer than finding the power button, I guess." Unless you had to turn it all the way on and then hit that button. In Earth cultures, the circle bisected by a line (usually over something in the center of the circle) meant no or don't. So maybe here, it meant cut it? Reduce?There really was no way to know until they turned it on. "Try it." she suggested.

"All right," said Ravi, moving the arm slowly towards the button in question. "Here goes." He carefully depressed the button.

At first, it seemed that nothing happened. There was silence as they all held their breaths to see if the device would do something. And they were not to be disappointed. After a couple of tense seconds, the thing hummed, and some of the symbols on its surface lit up. For a moment, it appeared to do nothing else. Then it rose two inches off of the table it had been sitting on, spun on its vertical axis, one hemisphere spinning away from them and the other toward them.

Selyna frowned. "Oh, I don't think this is going to end well..." she muttered more to herself.

The device apparently heard her -- it didn't, but the timing of its next move was highly coincidental. The two halves separated, spinning three centimeters apart. Between the halves of the thing was a smaller sphere that was still touching both sides. This one had been at the core of the larger one but was now exposed. It did not spin, but it did glow briefly. Then there was a tiny flare of light from it to the larger sphere. That caused the larger one to spin faster, but only for a few more seconds before it, too, emitted a flash of light, this one brighter by magnitudes.

Selyna covered her eyes, and when she could see again -- it was only a matter of seconds -- the object again sat quiescent on the table as if it had not moved. She released a breath and opened her mouth to say something relieved. It never emerged. The lights in the control room as well as the computers suddenly went dark, the emergency lighting coming up seconds later. "Shit... I guess it didn't mean half power..." But what had it done? It was in a sealed room, shielded. How could it have affected anything outside of that room? And how far did the effect go?

Ravi, meanwhile, had turned ashen. "That- that shouldn't have happened," he said. "How did it..." He began jamming his finger at buttons, but of course the mechanical arm inside the room did not work. He cursed in Hindi. "Now what?"

How should she know!? She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then did it again, then again. This should not have happened; he was right. But it had happened, and now they needed to figure out how to fix it. She closed her eyes for a moment, gathering her wits. Immediately, that prodigy's mind came online and started working the 'equations' of the situation. She took another deep breath and opened her eyes.

"Well, first we need to figure out exactly what it's done to the base and how much of the base was affected." she suggested. Moving to the intercom on the far wall by the door, she hit the button and spoke into the speaker, clearly and crisply. Even she was surprised at how much more confident she sounded than she felt. "Control, this is Braeden. Can anyone read me?"

No response came from the intercom, not even dead air. It appeared to be completely fried.

{Nathan's Office}

Nathan was working in his office when his computer went dark, as did the lights, and every other device drawing power from the base. Emergency lighting came on and he heard the air circulators start going again, which was a relief. He grabbed a radio off of his desk and tried calling engineering, but the radio was also dead. He pulled out his cellphone and found that it, too was deactivated. He tried to turn it on. Nothing.

He sighed. "So I guess this means that Ravi and Selyna at the very least figured out how to turn that thing on."

A second later his sergeant came in with two armed SFs. "Sir? General? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Sergeant," Nathan replied. He turned to Staff Sergeant Arcadia, who was one of the two SFs who'd entered his office. "Sergeant Arcadia, I know you guys are busy securing the base, but I need to find Doctors Azad and Braedyn. They were examining a piece of alien tech and I think they made it angry. I'd like to know first of all that they're alright, and then get them to work unfucking this mess. Can you put together a detail and make that happen for me?"

"Sir," Creighton said, not sure that any other answer would even be appropriate when given orders directly from a general. He turned quickly and went out of the room. He knew a team of SFs that were supposed to be on relief duty today. Hopefully by this time they were already geared and ready for orders. Finding them shouldn't be difficult as post orders were clear on where to muster in cases of unknown emergencies.

Even jogging through the base, it took him several minutes to get to the games room where the squad should be waiting for orders. Along the way he become more and more worried about the lack of communication. He kept trying, though, as he wound his way through the halls. Speed was important, even in the face of the sight of military running, armed, through the base. He was sure that some of the geeks would panic but that was secondary. If they did, they would easily be calmed - providing they could find power to the various Xboxes located throughout the recreational areas of base.

"Just how big is this place?" he asked himself as he came up on the room and slowed. He walked a good part of it during patrols but it never seemed as large as it did as he was running from one end to the other. Now, presuming he could find the team, he still had to locate the doctors. He had an idea where they may be and, after ordering the team to accompany him, he took off toward the danger room. A room designed to handle dangerous experiments equipped with robotic arms and shielding. Which, obviously, wasn't shield enough.

{Safe Room}

Ravi was pacing helplessly, trying to figure out what had happened and what to do now that it had. "We may need to go in there," he told Selyna. "But it's not safe. What if the same thing happens again like it did before and we start un-aging? How do we know we aren't already un-aging as it is?"

{Corridors}

"Is this another invasion like last time?" the man in the front asked. He was military, of some kind. Creighton knew that much about him despite he was in t-shirt and shorts, socks and sneakers. But the bearing was undeniable. Plus, he had an idea of the previous history of the base. "We're all going to be buried under the mountain aren't we?" There were others with him, an assortment of men and women from various disciplines around the base. Panic, it would seem, was the great equalizer among the base cliques.

"No, nothing at all like that!" Creighton said, shouted really, trying to make sure as many as possible heard him. He held his rifle to his shoulder, as did the others, in order to hold back the mob in front of them. "It's just a little power bump, that's it. Go back to your rally points and wait for further instruction!"

He didn't know how much of that he believed. Actually he did know and it was zero to none. He didn't know what caused the loss of power, not by a long shot. But General Wolf told him that the chief eggheads were working on alien tech and he was worried that piece of equipment had something to do with this. Many of the details of the off-world assignments were classified and so not much was generally known about them, but Creighton spoke with Jeremy at length during his hospital stay and followup convalescence. Some things were bound to slip out. Yes, Creighton should have reported the slips but...well...he liked the kid and he was already in enough trouble at the time. So Creighton just stored the info away in the back of his mind. What he knew, however, was that alien devices could be dangerous and unpredictable. Which made them dangerously unpredictable.

Add the group-think of panicked sheep and it was a cauldron ready to boil completely over.

"We're getting out of here!" the shorts clad "leader" said, screaming it as if the flashlight dimmed darkness were a sound barrier. "We're not dying under here!"

"Thank about it, you idiot!" Creighton said, trying not to shout. He couldn't shout. He was in charge of the response, of keeping these people from trying to break through the compound doors and escaping into the real world with their panicked stories. But he also had the orders from the General and this sidetrack wasn't getting that accomplished. Still, he and his team were all that stood between them and the door.

"You can't shoot all of us!" the man shouted, raising the hand that held the long, four cell flashlight by the end, as if he intended to use it as a club.

"No," Creighton said, watching the crowd behind him surge a step forward. One more encouragement, the SF airman felt, and they would break like a rampaging herd. "But you're armed with a metal barrel flashlight, which makes a pretty good club. Me? I've got a high powered M15 carbine set to auto. My first three bursts are going to rip through your chest and cranium. But that's okay, because the people behind you won't live long enough to feel your liquified brains splatter over them like a dropped milkshake. That's just me, I've got command of this squad behind me, all armed the same way I am. All highly trained and competent with their weapons. Maybe we won't get you all, on the first magazine, but how many of you think you will get hit?"

This elicited gasps, shock and outrage. But also mumbling. A lot of grumbling. The point, Creigton felt, was made.

"You are all hereby ordered to disperse immediately and report to your rally points. You will not be given a second warning!" He made sure to check the seat of rifle into shoulder, slipped his finger on the trigger and changed his stance slightly. Only to put the dot of his laser sight firmly over Shorts's heart.

Some in the back broke off immediately. Creighton took a shuffling half-step forward, keeping his laser dot firmly on the lead's chest. His squad moved with him, fanning out slightly to allow for a wider killing field. That appeared to be the last straw for the mob. Most immediately turned and started heading back down the corridor, away from the entrance. Some outright fled.

Most waited another ten seconds until all that was left was Shorts.

"Better," Creighton murmered as the others began to disappear behind darkened corners and corridors. "You and you," he said to his squad, pointing at random, "stay here and guard the entrance until relieved. Nobody comes in or out without express authorization of General Wolf."

"Yes, sir," the two said, not in unison but quick enough one after the other. They shouldered their rifles and took up their posts.

"You two, with me," Creighton said, not sure they'd seen the last of the panic, but they still had their orders to carry out.

{Safe Room}

Selyna watched Ravi pace, frowning to herself. There had been no response from the intercom, which meant very little really given that they were at the epicenter of the trouble. It could have fried only this room and its machines, or it could be bigger. There was just no way to tell at this point. Not without investigating it anyway7. She sighed. "Well, we won't know anything until we investigate. And considering that it fried everything in here, I think we're most likely already exposed. Anything it's going to do, it's likely already doing. But I don't feel any different."

She straightened her shoulders. "I'll go in and look at it if you want. We really need to know what we're dealing with." Oh, she was not dumb enough to go in there unprotected, though. She would get a hazzard suit before she went in there just to be safe.

“No,” replied Ravi quickly. “If anyone is going in there it should be me. Sorry. Call me old fashioned, but... well, I am. Plus, it’s my fault. I just... I don’t want to let whatever made us devolve out again. It’s not so much going on there as opening the door.”

Selyna frowned. Chivalry was one thing, but part of what was driving him was that he blamed himself. "Actually, I chose the symbol, so technically it's my fault," she corrected with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. She hoped it was just this room, but if it wasn't, they were both going to be in very big trouble. "But if you really want to do it, I won't stop you. Just..." She almost told him to be careful, but what the hell good was that now; they'd broken the 'careful' bits. "Nevermind." She waved it off. "I'll watch, and if something ooks off, I'm coming in to get you. No arguments, okay?"

"All right," he agreed. He stopped pacing long enough to stare at the window to the saferoom, then crossed to the hazmat suits hanging on one wall. "All right," he repeated as he began to pull one on. "I'm going to go in and try pushing that button we decided is end or cancel or some such. And hope to God it is not spitting out the same nonsense it was before."

"Anybody alive in there?" Creighton asked as he beat on the locked door. "This is Staff Sergeant Arcadia, come to retrieve Doctors Azad and Braeden!" He waited outside the door with the remainder of the team he put into service while giving those in the room time to answer. But he didn't feel very patient. When about thirty seconds passed, he beat on the door again, ready to shoot it down and go in by force if necessary.

Selyna paused, thinking she heard something. Then it came again, and she looked at Ravi. "Wait! Don't go in there yet." She moved to the door and called to Arcadia. "This is Dr. Braeden. We're fine." She paused, momentarily unsure whether or not she should open the door. After all, if it was only this room, then she didn't want to risk the men on the other side of the door. But if it was just this room, then why would the Staff Sergeant be looking for them? Deciding to take the risk, she opened the door slowly. "Retrieve us?" she asked.

"General Wolf would like to speak to you about what you may or may not have done to cause the base to go offline," Creighton said, hoping it sounded 'friendly' enough to their civilian sensibilities but also stern enough to get across the idea that this was not a request, really.

Selyna froze for a second, eyes widening for just the briefest of moments before she forced her expression to as near to calm as she could manage just then. "Shit on a shingle..." she muttered. So it was more than this room. "I'll go with you peacefully," she told Arcadia. She did not speak for other people, so she let Ravi answer for himself, though she suspected he wouldn't resist either given the circumstances.

From the sound of it, Nathan was not pleased at all, and she couldn't blame him. In his place, she'd be pretty pissed. She just wished she had better information to give him. But the sad truth was that she still had no better idea of how that thing worked or what they'd done than before. Well, might as well face the music like a woman.

Ravi's face blanched and he stood there, mouth agape for a few moments. "The- the base?" he stammered. "You mean it's not just this room?" His voice cracked on the last word and he dropped the hazmat suit which was still attached to one leg.

"No, sir, Doctor," Creighton said. "So far we've seen the entirety of New Dawn afflicted. Not sure how much farther it goes out because all our systems are offline, but it could very well be happening across the entire base, the city or country." He shrugged. "But that's not my worry. Orders are to get the two of you back to Wolf ASAP. You ready?"

Selyna took a moment to drag her wits back about her. The whole country possibly? Shit! No, don't do that. Calm. Don't borrow trouble you don't know exists yet. her mind cautioned her. She swallowed and looked at Arcadia. "I am." She wasn't sure that she really was, but there was no sense putting it off.

"Alright, Doctors, we're going straight to Wolf. I'm sure this is all just...temporary. I'm told you're two of the more brilliant minds on the entire planet. I'm sure this is just a blip. But we're moving out now," Creighton held the door open for them. The two SF personnel were waiting just outside and starting moving out at a fast walking pace. The trip back to the General's office took far less time than it took to get to the saferoom. Once there, Creighton tapped lightly on the door, opened it and stepped back, waiting for the two doctors to enter so he could close the door once again.